Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, was not seriously injured after being “examined by doctors” following a car crash on his way back to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv after visiting regions in the far east recently liberated from the military Russian invader, his spokesman said.
“In Kyiv, a car collided with the car of the President of Ukraine and escort vehicles,” Serhiy Nykyforov, Zelenskyy’s press secretary, said in a statement on Facebook early Thursday.
“The doctors who accompanied the head of state provided emergency aid to the driver of the car and transferred him to an ambulance. The president was examined by a doctor. No serious injuries were found,” Nykyforov said, adding that “law enforcement officers will find out all the circumstances of the accident.”
The incident came after Zelenskyy on Wednesday visited the strategic city of Izyum, liberated by his army last week in a lightning counterattack that saw Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces flee the battlefield in the northern regions of eastern Ukraine.
In his daily video address to the nation, delayed by several hours due to the accident, Zelenskyy said: “I returned from the Kharkiv region, from our Kharkiv region… Today, almost the entire region is unemployed”.
Zelenskyy added that “the Ukrainians again did what many thought was impossible” by liberating more than 4,000 square kilometers of territory in the country’s northeast from the Russian army.
Pointing to more alleged war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine’s eastern regions, Zelenskyy said: “The world must see this destruction, it must feel the pain that Russia has brought to Ukrainians.”
The president added: “What the world saw in Bucha, what we saw in the unoccupied territory of the Chernihiv region, the Sumy region, and what you and I are seeing now in the Kharkiv region are evidence of the genocide against Ukrainians. Evidence that Russia can provide nothing but genocide.”